Pellucidar
Pellucidar Pellucidar is a fictional Hollow Earth invented by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs for a series of action adventure stories. In a notable crossover event between Burroughs' series, there is a Tarzan story in which the Ape Man travels into Pellucidar. The stories initially involve the adventures of mining heir David Innes and his inventor friend Abner Perry after they use an "iron mole" to burrow 500 miles into the Earth's crust. Later protagonists include indigenous caveman Tanar and additional visitors from the surface world, notably Tarzan, Jason Gridley, and Frederich Wilhelm Eric von Mendeldorf und von Horst. Pulpdom, Nos. 64, 65, 66, 67, April, June, August, October, "Pellucidar Revisited" by Mike Taylor, published by Camille Cazedessus, =Geography = In Burroughs' concept, the Earth is a hollow shell with Pellucidar as the internal surface of that shell. Pellucidar is accessible to the surface world via a polar opening allowing passage between the inner and outer worldsBurroughs, Edgar Rice (1930). Tanar of Pellucidar. New York: Metropolitan. through which a rigid airship visits in the fourth book of the series.Burroughs, Edgar Rice (1930). Tarzan at the Earth's Core. New York: Metropolitan. Although the inner surface of the Earth has an absolute smaller area than the outer, Pellucidar actually has a greater land area, as its continents mirror the surface world's oceans and its oceans mirror the surface continents. A peculiarity of Pellucidar's geography is that due to the concave curvature of its surface there is no horizon; the further distant something is, the higher it appears to be, until it is finally lost in the atmospheric haze. Pellucidar is lit by a miniature sun suspended at the center of the hollow sphere, so it is perpetually overhead wherever one is in Pellucidar. The sole exception is the region directly under a tiny geostationary moon of the internal sun; that region as a result is under a perpetual eclipse and is known as the Land of Awful Shadow. This moon has its own plant life and (presumably) animal life, and hence either has its own atmosphere or shares that of Pellucidar. The miniature sun never changes in brightness, and never sets; so with no night or seasonal progression, the natives have little concept of time. The events of the series suggest that time is elastic, passing at different rates in different areas of Pellucidar and varying even in single locales. Also, several characters from the outer world who have lived a long time in Pellucidar seem to age slowly and exhibit considerable longevity. This is known through their interactions with people of the outer world where time remains fixed. =Culture = Pellucidar is populated by primitive people and prehistoric creatures, notably dinosaurs. The region in which Innes and Perry initially find themselves is ruled by the cities of the Mahars, intelligent flying reptiles resembling Rhamphorhynchus with dangerous psychic powers, who keep the local tribelets of Stone Age human beings in subjugation.Burroughs, Edgar Rice (1922). At the Earth's Core. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., passim. Innes and Perry eventually unite the tribes to overthrow the Mahars' domain and establish a human "Empire of Pellucidar" in its place.Burroughs, Edgar Rice (1923). Pellucidar. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., passim. While the Mahars are the dominant species in the Pellucidar novels, they seem confined to their handful of cities. Before their overthrow they use the Sagoths (a race of gorilla-men who speak the same language as Tarzan's apes) to enforce their rule over the human tribes within the area which they rule. Though Burrough's novels suggest that the Mahar realm is limited to one relatively small area of the inner world, John Eric Holmes' authorized sequel Mahars of Pellucidar indicates there are other areas of Mahar domination. Within and outside the Mahars' domain are scattered independent human cultures, most of them at the stone age level of development. Technically more advanced exceptions include the Korsars (corsairs), a maritime raiding society descended from surface-world pirates, and the Xexots, an indigenous Bronze Age civilization.Burroughs, Edgar Rice (1963). Savage Pellucidar. New York: Canaveral Press. All or most of the human inhabitants of Pellucidar share a common world-wide language. =Points of Interest Pellucidar wildlife Various animals reside in Pellucidar, primarily prehistoric creatures extinct on the outer world; others are Burroughsian inventions. They are listed below by outer world name (if known), Pellucidarian name (if known), and the book in which they first appear, along with any relevant comments. * Ant Bear - A huge edentate mammal that preys on the Giant Ants. It has no outer world equivalent and it's Pellucidarian name unknown. * Antelope - Pellucidarian name unknown. It first appeared in At the Earth's Core. * Apatosaurus - * Archaeopteryx - Pellucidarian name unknown. It appeared in Tarzan at the Earth's Core. * Aurochs - * Aztarag - A sea creature. Pellucidarian name for an unidentified outer world equivalent. * Brontotherium - * Cave Bear (Ryth) - It first appeared in At the Earth's Core. * Cave Hyena - Pellucidarian name unknown. * Cave Lion (Ta-ho) - * Cotylosaurus (Gorobor) - Giant lizards that serve as the Horibs' mode of transportation. It first appeared in Tarzan at the Earth's Core * Deinotherium - Pellucidarian name unknown. It first appeared in Tarzan at the Earth's Core. * Dimetrodon - * Dimorphodon - Pellucidarian name unknown. * Diplodocus (Lidi) - It first appeared in At the Earth's Core. * Dire Wolf (Codon) - It first appeared in At the Earth's Core. * Giant Ants - no outer world equivalent - Pellucidarian name unknown. * Gomphothere - * Hyaenodon (Jalok) - A dog-like carnivore that is not related to hyenas or wolves. * Hydrophidian - A giant sea snake that is designated by Burroughs. Neither the actual outer world or Pellucidarian equivalent are known. * Hyracotherium (Orthopi) - * Ichthyosaurus (Azdyryth) - * Labyrinthodontia (Sithic) - A giant amphibian carnivore. * Mastodon (Maj) - * Megatherium (Dyryth) - * Phorusrhacos (Dyal) - It first appeared in Tarzan at the Earth's Core. * Plesiosaurus - (Tandoraz, Ta-ho-az) - The two Pellucidarian names refer to larger and smaller varieties. * Pterodactyl (Thipdar) - It first appeared in''At the Earth's Core'' * Pteranodon - (Thipdar) * Rhamphorhynchus (Mahar) - An oversized, intelligent variety (see Mahars, under Races). It first appeared in At the Earth's Core. * Smilodon (Tarag) - * Snakes - * Stegosaurus (Dyrodor) - A carnivorous variety, able to manipulate its back plates to allow it to glide. * Trachodon - Pellucidarian name unknown. * Triceratops (Gyor) - * Trodon - Pellucidarian name for a creature with no outer world equivalent. The Trodon are dragon-like flying reptiles with pouches similar to those of marsupials. Not to be confused with the Troodon, an actual outer world extinct dinosaur. It first appeared in Back to the Stone Age. * Troodon - Pellucidarian name unknown. * Tylosaurus - Pellucidarian name unknown. * Tyrannosaurus (Zarith) - * Woolly Mammoth (Tandor) - * Woolly Rhinoceros (Sadok) - It first appeared in At the Earth's Core. Races Pellucidar also harbors enclaves of various nonhuman or semi-human races. Among the known races in Pellucidar are: * The Ape Men - A race of black ape-like creatures with prehensile tail and are arboreal. * The Azarians - A race of primitive man-eating giants.Burroughs, Edgar Rice (1944). Land of Terror. Tarzana, CA: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. * The Beast-Men - The Beast-Men (also called Brute-Men) are peaceful gorilla-like farmers. They are sometimes called "Gorilla-Sheep" for the sheep-like appearance of their faces. * The Coripies - A subterranean race that are also known as the Buried People. The Coripies are a race of short eyeless carrion-eaters. * The Ganaks - A race of horned bison men. They sometimes capture humans for their cruel sacrificial rites.Burroughs, Edgar Rice (1937). Back to the Stone Age. Tarzana, CA: Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. * The Gorbuses - A subterranean race of cannibalistic albinos who are apparently resurrected surface-world murderers. * The Horibs - A race of ferocious dinosaur-riding reptile men. * The Mahars - The master race of Pellucidar who resemble humanoid Rhamphorhynchus. * The Sabertooth Men - A race of cannibalistic black ape-like creatures with prehensile tails and dagger-like tusks. * The Sagoths - The gorilla-like servants of the Mahars. The novels # At the Earth's Core (1914)# Pellucidar (1915)# Tanar of Pellucidar (1929)# Tarzan at the Earth's Core (1929)# Back to the Stone Age (1937)# Land of Terror (1944)# Savage Pellucidar (1963) # =Sequels by John Eric Holmes = John Eric Holmes's Mahars of Pellucidar was a sequel to Burroughs' Pellucidar novels authorized by the Burroughs estate. Publication of Holmes' follow-up novel, Red Axe of Pellucidar, reportedly ready for print in 1980, was supposedly blocked by the estate, and only saw print much later in a limited private edition.Martin, John. "John Eric Holmes: Mahars of Pellucidar and Red Axe of Pellucidar". # Mahars of Pellucidar (1976)# Red Axe of Pellucidar (1993) Tarzan: The Epic Adventures In the 1996 novel Tarzan: The Epic Adventures by R. A. Salvatore, Pellucidar is featured in the later part of the story. The book is based on the teleplay for the TV pilot of the series Tarzan: The Epic Adventures by Burt Armus. The story is inspired by the '' Return of Tarzan'' and Tarzan at the Earth's Core.Salvatore, R.A. " Tarzan: The Epic Adventures". =In other media = Pellucidar has appeared in one movie adaptation. The first novel was filmed as At the Earth's Core (1976), directed by Kevin Connor and starring Doug McClure as David Innes and Peter Cushing as Abner Perry. Pellucidar appears in the Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle episode "Tarzan at the Earth's Core." The 1996 pilot to the TV series Tarzan: The Epic Adventures also features Pellucidar, as well as the character Jana from the book Tarzan at the Earth's Core. This story also features a race of Mahars able to transform into humanoid form. Pellucidar appears in a few episodes of the Disney cartoon series The Legend of Tarzan, loosely inspired by Tarzan at the Earth's Core. In the show, however, Pellucidar is merely described as being a region below Africa where dinosaurs still live. None of the characteristics of it described in the novels are seen. The hollow interior of the Earth seen in Journey to Middle Earth by The Asylum bears some similarity to Pellucidar, although the film was intended as a film adaptation of a novel by Jules Verne. Pellucidar is revisited by Tarzan and is the central location of the Dark Horse Comics crossover Tarzan vs. Predator at the Earth's Core, where Tarzan faces off against the alien Predator species. Influence Pellucidar was the major inspiration for Lin Carter's Zanthodon novels of the late 1970s and early 1980s, set in the vast cavern of Zanthodon beneath the Sahara Desert.Valdron, Den. "Lin Carter's Literary Pellucidar" The Hollow Earth milieu of Skartaris in the Warlord series of comic books by Mike Grell, published from 1976–1989, is essentially a translation of Pellucidar into the graphic medium, with the admixture of magic and elements of the Atlantis myth.Brian Cronin, 2006, "Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #54!" (archive) The concept of Terra-Prime,is partially inspired by both Pellucidar and the Hyborean Age,with mixtures of Barsoom,Dune,Tatooine,the Death-Star,Correscant,Krypton, In James P. Blaylock's The Digging Leviathan (1984), a pair of rival scientific teams compete to reach Pellucidar; the story concludes before the goal is attained. Blaylock's Zeuglodon revisits the Pellucidar theme, when a group of children attempt to rescue Giles Peach, one of the characters traveling to Pellucidar in The Digging Leviathan. In John Crowley's Little, Big (1981), a drug named Pellucidar is mentioned and appears to have an exhilarating and even aphrodisiac effect. A tribute story, Maureen Birnbaum at the Earth's Core, appeared in Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordsperson.[http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?21725 Contents listing for first edition of Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordsperson at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database] During the initial explorations of Lechuguilla Cave in the late 1980s, a chamber was named "Pellucidar" in honor of these stories. In Philip Jose Farmer's "Riders of the Purple Wage", there is a concept known as "the Pellucidar Breakthrough" In the Tunnels Series, the Garden of the Second Sun is strongly based on Pellucidar. See also * At the Earth's Core (1976 movie)* Tarzan: The Epic Adventures (1996/1997 TV series)* Hollow Earth* Subterranean fiction * References External links * Official site from Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. - Tarzana, California * * von Horst's Pellucidar - articles, book summaries, publishing histories, pastiches, glossary, languages, maps, hollow Earth theory, and film and TV reviews by Pellucidar scholar, David Critchfield. * * Maps of Pellucidar in ERBzine 3042 * * Beasts of Pellucidar at Angelfire* Pellucidar at Comic Vine * * * * (alternate edition) * * * Novel Pellucidar is a 1915 fantasy novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the second in his series about the fictional "hollow earth" land of Pellucidar. It first appeared as a four-part serial in All-Story Weekly from May 8–29, 1915. It was first published in book form in hardcover by A. C. McClurg in September, 1923. A map by Burroughs of the Empire of Pellucidar accompanied both the magazine and book versions. Plot summary David Innes and his captive, a member of the reptilian Mahar master race of the interior world of Pellucidar, return from the surface world in the Iron Mole invented by his friend and companion in adventure Abner Perry. Emerging in Pellucidar at an unknown location, David frees his captive. He names the place Greenwich and uses the technology he has brought to begin the systematic exploration and mapping of the unknown land while searching for his lost companions, Abner, Ghak, and Dian the Beautiful. He soon encounters and befriends a new ally, Ja the Mezop of the island country of Anoroc; later he finds Abner, from whom he learns that in his absence the human revolt against the Mahars has not been going well. In a parlay with the Mahars David bargains for information of his love Dian and his enemy Hooja the Sly One, which his foes agree to supply in return for the book containing the Great Secret of Mahar reproduction that David stole and hid in the previous novel. David undertakes to recover it, only to find that Hooja has been there before him and claimed Dian as his own reward of the Mahars! Now he has to track down and defeat the sly one before resuming the human war of independence. Ultimately this is accomplished, and with the aid of the resources David has brought from the surface world he and Abner succeed in building a confederacy of human tribes into an "Empire of Pellucidar" that wipes out the Mahar cities and establishes a new human civilization in their place. Reception Galaxy reviewer Floyd C. Gale, discussing the 1962 reprint, noted that the novel's "scientific" background was "hard swallowing," but nevertheless praised the novel, saying "once Burroughs establishes his background, his reader has no time to quibble." "Galaxy's 5 Star Shelf", Galaxy Science Fiction, June 1963, p.137 Official Edgar Rice Burroughs Tribute and Weekly Webzine Site Since 1996 ~ Over 10,000 Web Pages in Archive Volume 1782 Adaptation DC Comics began an adaptation of the novel in Weird Worlds #6, mixing it with the ending of At the Earth's Core. Copyright The copyright for this story has expired in the United States, and thus now resides in the public domain there. The text is available via Project Gutenberg. References External links * *[http://www.erblist.com/erblist/pellsumm.html Edgar Rice Burroughs Summary Project Page for Pellucidar]*Librivox Audiobook Origins of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pellucidar Series — the Hollow Earthers By Michael D. Sellers On September 23, 2012 · 4 Comments · In ERBZINE, Featured When we read and think about Barsoom, Amtor, and the there worlds created by Edgar Rice Burroughs it’s easy to look at the creations from the perspective of 2012 …. but a lot more interesting to look at them from the perspective of the time in which they were written. Take Pellucidar — the world within the Earth discovered by David Innes and Abner Perry. Burroughs began writing “At the Earth’s Core” in January 1913 at a time when there was a substantial body of belief that a world existed within our world — a “hollow earth” theory in which there were entrances to the inner world at one or the other (or both) of the poles. Erbzine summarizes the Pellucidar series: David Innes and Abner Perry build a giant mechanical prospector with which they hope to uncover vast mineral David Innes and Abner Perry build a giant mechanical prospector with which they hope to uncover vast mineral deposits far beneath the surface. On the “Iron Mole’s” first trip, however, they discover that their vehicle can’t be steered. Death seems certain, for doesn’t everyone know that the center of the Earth is a molten mass of white-hot magma? Instead what Innes and Perry discover is that the earth’s crust in only 500 miles thick and that the inner surface is inhabited. This is the land of PELLUCIDAR, a place where dinosaurs roam through the jungles, and where saber-toothed tigers hunt the mastodon and mammoth. A tiny sun, the molten core of the Earth, hangs in the center of the heavens, shedding perpetual daylight upon Pellucidar. Because the sun never sets, because it is always now, there is no such thing as time in Pellucidar! Stranger still, because Pellucidar rests on the inner side of the Earth’s crust, there is no horizon. The land curves* upwards*, as if you were standing on the inside of a gigantic bowl. Humans dwell in Pellucidar as well, stone-age men and women who must fight to survive in this savage world. Even worse, these people have been made slaves of the Mahars, a race of intelligent but sinister reptiles who look upon humans as nothing more than beast of burden or as tasty snacks in one of their ghoulish ceremonies. The struggle of David Innes and Abner Perry to free humanity from the Mahar tyranny is only the beginning of their adventures in Pellucidar. There are a total of seven books in this exciting series, in which Edgar Rice Burroughs takes you on journeys across savage seas infested with plesiosaurs and other hungry creatures, to mountains where pterodactyls roost, and to lands where every waking moment is a struggle to survive. Even Tarzan visits Pellucidar, taking a ride on a dirigible through “Symmes Hole” at the North Pole. So take a journey, via Iron Mole or dirigible, and discover for yourself the wonders, the terrors, and the excitement of Pellucidar… The roots of “Hollow Earth” theory go back at least as far as the 17th Century, when British astronomer Edmund Halley put forward the theory that Earth consists of four concentric spheres. Under Halley’s concept, the interior or the earth was populated with life and lit by a luminous atmosphere. Under his theory the aurora borealis, or northern lights, was a phenomenon that was caused by the escape of this gas through a thin crust at the poles. In the 1800′s John Symmes vigorously promoted the idea of an inner world and eventually received recognition in the form of “Symmes Hole” … the opening to the inner world. Symmes lobbied publicly for an expedition to the North Pole to find the entrance to the world below. Another promoter of the hollow earth theory, Cyrus Reed Teed, promoted the idea of a hollow earth for nearly forty years, printing pamphlets and giving speeches and founding a cult called the Koreshans. In 1906, William Reed published The Phantom of the Poles, in which he put forward the theory that the poles are entrances to the hollow Earth. In 1913, the same year that ERB started writing At the Earth’s Core, Marshall B. Gardner published, privately, Journey to the Earth’s Interior, which postulated a hollow earth with an interior sun 600 miles in diameter. It’s unlikely that Burroughs read all of these — it is equally unlikely that he read none of them. Burroughs’ own library contained the fictional Through the Earth, published in 1898 and written by Clement Fezandie. Erbzine is a good source for further reading: ERB got his ideas somewhere.Might as well have been any or all the above.Strange the David Innes character looks like Burroughs take on Bedford and Abner Perry his take on Professor Cavor from the H.G.Wells The First Men in the Moon.Two guys-one young-one old travel in an invention by the elder scientist to a strange place-? Category:Edgar Rice Burroughs locations Category:Pellucidar Category:1915 novels Category:1910s fantasy novels Category:Pellucidar novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs Category:American adventure novels Category:American fantasy novels Category:Novels about dinosaurs Category:American science fiction novels Category:Novels first published in serial form Category:Works originally published in Argosy (magazine)